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‘Woodcuts' exhibit - A reverse view of the world

Recent graduates display prints from panoramas to interiors

Christopher Alexander's woodcut print “The Palace at Kimberly,” based on the artist's own apartment, is on display in a show with Ashton Durham at UNCW.
Courtesy photo

By Justin LacyStarNews Correspondent

Published: Thursday, August 1, 2013 at 12:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 6:27 p.m.

Like a man-made trail winding through a forest, the woodcuts of recent University of North Carolina Wilmington studio art graduates Christopher Alexander and Ashton Durham tend to show minimal evidence of civilization. Instead, the etched wood panels and their printed counterparts focus in on isolated trees while panning out to broad riversides to offer a high-contrast view of the world we live in.

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"Christopher Alexander & Ashton Durham: Woodcuts" is on display in the Art Gallery of the Cultural Arts Building on the campus of UNCW through Aug. 23. Each print hangs with its respective woodcut panel, showcasing the medium and the method behind it. The wooden panels themselves hide nothing; the entire process is there for the viewer to observe.

As far as palette, Durham and Alexander have two options to work with: black and white. They each painted their panels black before whittling out the low-relief, unpainted portions that translate to white on the prints. At the opening reception for "Woodcuts" in May, they inked up the panels and pressed them to their support surfaces right in the gallery. What is black on the panel became black on the print.

Trees, some bare and wiry, others thick and hollow, appear illuminated throughout these nocturnal scenes as if lit up by back-porch lights. Throughout her work, the only sign of human activity is a power line pole jutting up and across the evening sky. Durham uses her wooden medium to call attention to this tall, wooden human artifact with perpendicular branches, tree-like in nature. Across the gallery hangs "Time on the River," Alexander's largest work to date, a 12-foot-long, six-panel rendering of the Cape Fear River.

Alexander uses those 12 feet to unroll a panoramic display that captures the girth of the waterway. It's so wide, it's almost like you're actually there, wading in the water.

In one corner of the piece, two tiny figures stand on some manmade surface, either a dock or a ship's bow.

They are minute in comparison to the gaping breadth of the Cape Fear – powerless against its currents.

In "The Palace at Kimberly," Alexander leaves nature for a different kind of habitat: the urban apartment, specifically, his own apartment. Using careful cross-etches, Alexander creates a hazy panoramic rendering of his living room across four panels totaling eight feet wide. Whereas the "Time on the River" panorama almost feels natural, "The Palace at Kimberly" spreads a small space filled with furniture out to unusual lengths, resulting in a sort of dizzying vertigo.

There's a hurried lean to the woodcuts, as if a distant memory of this place is whirling through your mind, brief and ephemeral.

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